


Innovations

by nostalgia



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bacon, F/M, Fluffy, Gen, Shippy Gen, regeneration angst, whouffle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 01:01:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgia/pseuds/nostalgia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's gone right off bacon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Innovations

He's gone right off bacon. 

He gets as far as opening the packet before the smell of raw meat turns his stomach. He imagines it sizzling, spitting at him, shrinking in the heat. He drops it into the waste-disposal machine and opens the fridge door to see what else there is to eat.

Clara loves bacon. Or at least, he thinks she does. It's what they eat on Thursday mornings, and this is Thursday and the Doctor can't stand the thought of cooking bacon. 

He wants to keep innovation to a minimum. She may have seen his old faces, but knowing he can change isn't quite the same as it happening right in front of her. He has to make sure she's okay, he has to make sure he hasn't changed too much for her. He doesn't know what he'd do without her. 

She'll be coming into the kitchen soon, expecting bacon. Maybe an omelette would do, but then she'd ask why Thursday mornings had changed and he'd have to tell her that things might not always be the way they were. 

Even the fact that it's Thursday is Clara's doing. There's no time in the vortex - he's explained that to her - but still she insists that the days follow each other in the usual Earth order. It had seemed such a small thing to go along with this pretence, but now he finds it irritating. If it wasn't for her it wouldn't be Thursday and he wouldn't be worrying about bacon. 

He remembers dozens of reactions to his regenerations. Distrust, concern, fear, disgust, shock. Peri didn't hide her sense of betrayal, Rose asked him if he could change back. 

“I'm not changing back,” he says to himself in his new voice. 

“Didn't say you should,” says Clara from the doorway. She yawns and stretches, her clothes clinging to her curves and apparently he hasn't changed enough not to find that interesting. She steps into the kitchen, crossing the room and hopping up onto the counter next to the toaster. “Were you talking to yourself? Is that what you do now?”

“I always talk to myself,” he tells her, “it's just that usually there's someone else in the room.”

Clara looks hurt and he regrets lashing out like that. He's not a wounded animal, he knows better than to hurt people before they can hurt him. 

And yet he doesn't want to apologise. Because damn it this is normal, this is how things are supposed to be. You die, you regenerate, you get on with life.

“I don't like bacon any more,” he says, stepping off the edge of the cliff. Maybe she'll catch him. 

“What's wrong with it?”

“Everything's wrong with it! How can you eat it? And,” he presses on, in for a penny and so on, “it's not really Thursday. We're in a timeless time-like infinity, and if there _were_ days of the week then...” He stops and looks at her, waiting.

“I'm not leaving,” she says, hopping off the counter and stepping into his personal space. “It's not about bacon or Thursdays, it's about you being you and I still... like you.”

“I still like you,” he says, understating wildly.

“So we just won't have bacon for breakfast,” she says, stepping back from him and finally - _at last_ \- smiling. 

“It can still be Thursday,” he offers, grateful.

“So what do we have for breakfast on Thursdays?”

“Something different.”

“I like something different,” she says. 

He realises that he actually believes her.


End file.
